The Growler
The sun was shining on the large, green clearing in the middle of the wood. To the north, east, south and west, as far as the eyes could see, stretched the great wood. Tall oak, slender birch, intermingled with fir and spruce, the forest was home to many creatures, not all of whom enjoyed one another’s company. For now though, on a beautiful but brisk sunlit day, heralding the beginning of autumn season, all appeared at peace. Until the wolf came.
Out of the shadows of the far eastern end, the wolf came, sidling into the sunlight with the lithe motion of a predator on the hunt. His pelt was gray, and dyed with green and brown so that he could blend into the surrounding foliage with ease. He wore a cloak, rather thin and worn, and a belt on which hung two long, sharp knives. Keeping to the treeline, the wolf began the circumnavigation of the clearing, trying hard to remain unnoticed.
Fore had seen all. Crouched in one of the oak trees on the clearing’s western side, the fox nodded to his companion, who slid stealthily down the trunk of the tree, and into the depths of the forest. Laying an arrow on the string of his bow, Fore continued to examine the wolf’s progress, as it was always wise to be vigilant with such wild beasts.
Thinks rubbed his paws together as he slunk through the wood. It was a nervous habit he had gained someplace in kithood, and a rather annoying one too. Thinks made a conscious effort to draw his knife and spin that instead. The clan should be encamped just ahead. It was well that Clanner Ges had suggested a recon around the immediate vicinity of the camp, otherwise the Growler might have made it to the secondary station without notice.
Thinks’s eyes opened wide for a split second as slight pain reached his awareness. He had cut his right paw on his own knife, idiot that he was. Mentally shaking his head at himself, he placed his knife back in its belt and brushed aside the carefully positioned branches that concealed the clanpath.
The clanpath was a pattern of symbols and other markings that could lead any member of the correct clan to their campsite. Following these markers were quite easy to Thinks, now that he had gone on about seventy missions with Fore. Ducking under a willow tree’s branches, Thinks thought back to his first mission with Fore; on that one too they had encountered a wolf, but it had not been an experience he had wanted to repeat.
The clanpath ran its course to an opening on a thick, briary hedge. Thinks cupped both paws in front of his mouth and shouted, “Hey! Dodge! Parcel! Let me pass or Clanner Wet will have your pelts!”
With a laugh, a bright orange fox dropped out of a tree behind Thinks and poked him in the back.
“Come on, Thinks!” said the fox, “We haven’t had our fun in ages! The last time we had to eliminate a trespasser was-”
“That old porcupine that half dragged itself here to die.” said a voice in the trees. Thinks looked up and saw a gray fox armed with a bow leaning casually on an elm branch. “You were quite annoyed with ‘our fun’ yourself, Dodge, when you accidentally punched the thing right in its nose.”
“Aww, that doesn’t nearly count as a trespasser, Parcel,” Dodge complained to his friend, “it was a dumb animal, and I was just puttin’ it out of its poor misery with my knife. I never tried punching it, and a paw full of needles is a small price to pay for clan privacy.”
Parcel grinned, “And a paw full of needles is a small price for you to pay to get the attention of Green vixen, I’ll bet.”
“Shame on your snout, Parcelofhisfatherssight!” Dodge exclaimed, pointing his finger up into the treetops at his partner. “Accusing a fellow comrade of favored attention? Now don’t you go about spreading tales like that! If the vixens want me, they can all have a piece of me! I wouldn’t care a whit if they’re green, blue or yellow!”
“And I wouldn’t care if you have fun with me, with a porcupine, or with twenty Purple vixens!” said Thinks, interjecting in on the banter, “I have an important scouting report to bring to Clanner Wet, and you two are wasting valued time!”
Dodge sighed in complaint, and Parcel snickered in the branches, but both let him pass into the campsite of clan Truth Five.
The clan camp contained an array of shelters built around a central hearth that was dug into the ground. The outlying shelters were for the clan hunters and scouts, the next ring the clan warriors, then the Clanners, the most elite thinkers, strategizers and leaders all were arrayed closest to the hearth, close by was the Clanner’s den, the place they discussed the clan’s decisions. The vixens were arranged in the camp by their color, and shifted according to their own governing by the Regis of Vixens, who had her shelter with the Clanners (probably due to the fact of her unofficial status as a sort of female Clanner, Thinks supposed).
Thinks nodded his head to his various connections in the camp, but spoke little (unusual for him) and rubbed his paws together rapidly as he approached the shelter of Clanner Wet. He saluted the Gaurdfox on duty, and waited as his request to report to Clanner Wet was sent down the line to the Clanner himself. In only a few moments, Wet appeared.
He was a tall, well-built fox, with a broad chest and heavily muscled arms. He was known for his prowess in battle, having been a major factor for their clan during the skirmishes with Clan Fine Eight, and was single handedly the reason why Clan Right Three had not slaughtered them all in their sleep. From his side hung a crescent ax, and the metal was colored in the purple of Clan Truth.
“Report, Scoutfox.” Wet commanded.
“Clanner Wet,” Thinks began, forcing his hands to his sides, “Scoutfox Foreshadowings and I, Scoutfox Thinksidewaysfirst, covered the area requested in our recon, and encountered a wolf entering the large eastern clearing.”
Thinks grew conscious of a dead silence that had fallen upon the camp.
“We were unobserved as we watched the wolf, and Scoutfox Foreshadowings sent me to request your opinion upon the matter, as the wolf is far away from camp enough to not force engagement, but close enough to perhaps be a future threat.”
“Could he have moved very far in the time it took you to arrive and report?”
“Not very likely, Clanner Wet. He was taking pains not to be seen, which slowed him.”
“In what manner was the wolf acting, Scoutfox? You said he was trying not to be seen?”
“The wolf appeared to be attempting stealth- which he might have achieved, had it not been for the polished metal of the knives he carried and Scoutfox Foreshadowings’s excellent eyesight.”
“In other words,” Wet muttered, almost to himself, “The beast was acting almost like it could think. Strange.”
Thinks waited, his posture perfectly straight, tail lowered respectfully, eyes forward. His one paw tapped the hilt of his dagger, but aside from that there was no motion. No motion in the entire camp, even. Thinks felt the silent pressure of fifty pairs of eyes staring at him from all sorts of directions. He was not surprised. Rumors flew swiftly in a clan, and the best conformation of rumor were two eyes that could see and a pair of ears that could hear.
Wet lowered his gaze back to Thinks. “It was a commendable decision to come to me. I will gather a few clan Warfox, and then you will lead us to the wolf. You may rest until we come for you, Scoutfox.”
Thinks nodded his thanks, then stepped back from the Clanner, and into the outer rings. His own shelter was in the outermost. It contained only the necessities required for a Scoutfox: a selection of knives, some special herbs for quick field treatments, dried rations wrapped in leaves, a quiver filled with arrows, twine and flint, extra water bottles, and a bow (That needed use. Thinks was worse than average at those weapons). The more personal possessions were considered to be effects, and were either worn or placed into a pouch that could be bound across the chest of the fox.
He sat down on a small stump he had rigged up, pulled some herbs out of his stash, and bound the ones he thought he might need across his left foreleg, then removed a cluster of grapes from his supply pouch and began to eat. He and Fore had found a secret stash of grapevines the third day after they had decided to stick here, and he had been saving some for a certain blue, who he was sure would show up fairly soon. Most dogfoxes complained that the only flaw in a vixen is their insatiable curiosity, but to Thinks, if that was the only flaw, vixens were flawless.
“Hello, Thinks,” said a silky smooth voice from behind the Scoutfox, “It’s good for the clan to see you return, uninjured.”
Thinks felt paws resting on the back of his shoulders and he leaned back, closing his eyes.
“Hello, Blue. Nice to see I was missed.” He pulled a grape from its cluster and popped it into his mouth, making sure to emphasize how juicy and delicious it was.
“Now, you mustn’t call me that. My name is Serena Blue.”
“You know that according to the complexities of clan law, I can not call you that.” Thinks said, reaching for another grape.
“Complexities can be complex, but we can ignore that one as long-standing friends, right?”
“So,” he said, smacking his lips and ignoring the question to annoy her, “What do you want to know, Blue?”
“Me? Want something? You must be mistaken.” Thinks could picture the blue vixen smiling that slow creeping grin she always did. He leaned back further into her. He pulled a grape loose.
Suddenly, and with a yelp from Serena, Thinks lost his balance and fell completely backwards, knocking over the vixen. Embarrassed, the red fox scrambled off of the annoyed vixen’s stomach and hastily brushed the dirt off of his fur. He really should have bathed at least his paws in the small stream before he had gone to his shelter, perhaps he should go now, even though he had already touched- fallen- into her.
Serena sat up and arched an eyebrow at him. Her bright blue tattoos were inked all across one of her arms and slightly up the side of her face. The blue lines formed intricate patterns and shapes on her pearl white fur, and Thinks realized, all of a sudden, that he had been staring quite blatantly at her for some time, and his face heated again.
“Well, er, sorry Blue. I mean Serena.” Thinks rubbed his left ear in what he hoped was perceived as an embarrassed apology, then bent down and stuck a paw out to assist her. “I… didn’t- well, I just got back from Clanner Wet and… you need help getting up?”
“Oh, I am fine.” she leaned back until she was reclining upon the leaf coated ground. “It’s quite comfortable down here, the leaves feel quite fine.”
The vixen reached behind her, and pulled out his bunch of grapes that he had dropped unnoticed, and sniffed them. Satisfied, she began to pluck the fruit off their stems and eat as Thinks stood awkwardly.
Serena glanced up at him and smiled.
“Oh come on now,” she said coyly, “You were the one so insistent that we lay down and talk.”
“I, well, didn’t mean to insist.”
“But here we are.”
Thinks sighed, crossed his arms together, and sat facing the vixen, prepared to play the game.
There was silence.
Serena raised an eyebrow, and gestured to Thinks with the bunch of grapes.
“Your turn,” she said.
“Those are my grapes.”
“Oh, I wasn’t meaning that. What about your umm, right word, right word, Oh! Yes, your meeting with the Clanner Wet?”
“Nothing really.” Thinks tapped one of his claws against his forearm. “We had seen something, Fore and I, and, well Fore spotted it, but he sent me back to camp to tell Wet. Fore stayed back, and here I am.”
“And Wet thought what of your news?”
“Well, I’m going to show him what we found, as soon as he can muster enough Warfox.”
“Warriors… How many?”
“Only a couple.”
“Couple. That one is a vague word. It could refer to a pair of Warfox, it could refer to only a squadron of Warfox as opposed to three full battalions. The word could refer to pairs of even numbers, and a single indivisible number. Very evasive of you to use that word.”
Serena’s ice blue eyes sparkled. She thought she had enough information.
“Now, we could use some logic here to figure out what you are not saying. We do not have nearly enough Warfox for more than a squadron of warriors, and the last battalion of Warfox was assembled in the Third Clan War, but fractured, probably due to the individual loyalties the Warfox had to their individual leaders. On the whole that battalion experiment, if it could be called such a formal word, was a failure, so I doubt that your news was that the Clanner Truth had ordered a mass gathering of armies.”
Thinks nodded an affirmation of that ridiculous statement. It was part of the unspoken rules: if the other fox discounts an implausible hypothesis, let them know.
“I also happen to know the details of your conversation with gaurdfox Parcel and Dodge. You came knowing you had news that a Clanner, specifically Clanner Wet, would want to hear, and since Wet is the Clanner of War, you must have come with news of a threat. But you let the gaurdfox carry on before insisting to pass. You even let yourself smile at a joke gaurdfox Parcel cracked, meaning that the threat you bear news of is either far in the future, or unable to commence its posture of danger immediately. Or you have no grasp of the situation.”
Thinks wondered what tree she had been hiding in.
“This also explains why Clanner Wet is taking his time selecting Warfox, instead of rousing the whole Warfox section and rushing into the woods. So, the conclusion I draw is that you have encountered an animal in the woods nearby which could perhaps pose a threat, but must still be handled with delicacy. I am right, I trust?”
Again Thinks nodded- she had gotten the situation about as right as could be had without the specifics of what the dangerous animal was.
“Well?” Serena asked him, lying down and crossing her arms behind her head. “What was it?”
“We,” Thinks said slowly, “saw a wolf.”
“Was it dead?”
“No, it was alive and stalking the eastern clearing.”
Serena snorted, “Right. The eastern clearing. How far away from the camp is it?”
“Not far if you can go by clanpath, but without it, kind of far. But something was weird about this wolf.”
“Was it the incessant salivating, crooked fangs, or the patchy fur? Wolves always look half diseased.”
“I have seen a wolf before, Serena. It was live too.”
“Oh yes, you and Fore were the ones who found the ragged thing on the edge of the old camp.”
Serena frowned slightly. That wolf was the reason they had moved. Thinks had spotted that one, laying half dead in between the roots of a toppled tree. That day had been rainy, and Thinks had caught a whiff of a pungent odor. Fore had thought the beast dead, but when they had gotten closer, the thing had shakily stood up and staggered after them, dripping a disgusting yellowish saliva from a broken jaw. The wretch had crawled after them for a mile on all fours before lowering itself to the ground and shuddering one last time. Fore had got the Clanners, and they had examined the corpse. The wolf had died from a horrible gut wound, inflicted, Wet said, by another of the same species.
But this new wolf had a full coat, its fangs were in its muzzle, and it looked like a completely normal animal, just, well, acted different. Less brutish and stupid. And there was something about it… something about the way it…
“Serena,” Thinks said, “The wolf walked on his hind legs.”
“It walked like us?”
Thinks nodded to the vixen.
“Could it- do you think- it might talk?” Serena asked with hesitation.
“I don’t know, Blue.”
Clanner Wetaroundtheears gripped and re-gripped his ax handle, the purple metal on the blade strangely dull in the fading light. Gathering the warriors had taken more time than he had wished, since a party of them had been sent for foraging at the northern border of the camp., so it was later than Wet had anticipated when he returned for Scoutfox Thinks, who had been engrossed in conversation with a Blue, of all vixens. Wet mentally shook his head. Vixens of the Blue were not to be taken lightly- rumored to have a network that spanned across all of the Clans, no matter the Ideal, and were almost as bad as the Black. Perhaps worse, for it was fact and not merely rumor that the Black had established connections everywhere.
A thorny branch whipped back from the Warfox in front of him, and Wet caught it in his claw as it shot at his eyes. Clan Truth Five had its own Black, but Wet had only seen her a handful of times. The vixen preferred only to be seen by her subservient grays.
Wet was bringing up the rear as a guard, up ahead leading the front, the Scoutfox Thinks raised a paw for everyone to stop. Silence fell, then with a rustle, another Scoutfox, gray and armed with a bow, slid out of a tree in front of them and clasped Scoutfox Thinks’s shoulder in a familiar manner. This, Wet remembered, would be Scoutfox Foreshadowings.
“The Wolf is waiting in the middle of the clearing.” Foreshadowings said to Wet when he saw him. “I don’t know how, but it seems he knows where you are.”
Wet grunted, he had hoped to catch the wolf by surprise. Decrepit as they sometimes appeared, wolves were horrific to fight, even with the odds stacked in your favor.
“Is the wolf as unusual as Scoutfox Thinksidewaysfirst assures me?”
“It’s carrying knives and walking around on its hind legs.” Scoutfox Foreshadowings shrugged his shoulders. “Normal for us, for their species….”
Wet got the picture. Gesturing for the Warfoxes to come in close, he gave his instructions.
“Guess, take Hanker and Whipp around the circumference of the clearing- right side mind you. Have Scoutfox Foreshadowings help lead you. I will take Grasper and Pain with me. Scoutfox Thinksidewaysfirst, take us around the left side. When I give the signal, approach the beast in moonform. Scoutfox, stay back with your bow if the beast gets out of the circle.”
The other seven clanfox needed, and began the movements. It was a simple containment plan. Wet wanted this strange wolf alive. He was in the center of the clearing, as Scoutfox Foreshadowings had said, and was clearly waiting for something- whether or not he was waiting for Wet’s patrol was another matter Wet would have to consider. The wolf stood straight and held a long, jagged dagger in both paws. He had a strip of bent metal diagonally across his chest, under which he wore a fabric tunic. A black rope was tied around his waist from which dangled a satchel and sling.
Wet got into position at the edge of the clearing, gave the other team a few moments to ready themselves, then started spinning his ax by the thong attached to the bottom of the shaft. The ax had holes, which some considered decorative, but Wet had discovered that spinning the ax made a whistling whooshing sound- something not quite natural sounding, but far more unrecognizable to foes as a fox-made sound. Wet stepped out of the brush as the ax sound vibrated through the glade, and at its sound Guess stepped out of the shadows behind the wolf with Hanker and Whipp on either side of him and Forshadowings last with his bow. The positioning went well, Wet’s group and Guess’s group became a ring around the wolf- a loose ring to be sure of some measure of safety- and Wet took a pace forward, ax ready to smash the wolf’s skull.
“Can you speak, Wolf?” Wet asked.
The wolf flicked intelligent eyes from Warfox to Warfox, and nodded his head.
He did not speak.
“Turn back from here- you’re approaching clan territory, and we have no love for your kind.” Wet continued.
The wolf gave Wet what might have been a smile, shook his head in a clear negative, but said nothing. Wet pressed his ax up loosely against the wolf’s throat, signaling to Thinksidewaysfirst. The scout put down his bow and, drawing a knife, disarmed the wolf.
“Finally,” the wolf said, surprising the foxes around him, “You foxes take your time disarming your enemies. I was afraid I’d never get to speak to you.”
“Why would you not speak to us before?” Wet growled.
The wolf glanced at him sideways, then turned his attention to Thinksidewaysfirst.
“I can answer him if you want me too.” He said to Thinksidewaysfirst.
Thinksidewaysfirst seemed surprised that the wolf would converse with him over Wet, who dug his ax against the wolf’s throat, scratching the wolf slightly.
“You will speak to me.” Wet hissed menacingly.
The wolf smiled again, but his eyes seemed to be flecks of granite, unyielding, willing to be broken rather than bend. Thinksidewaysfirst suddenly gave a noise of realization, and, very carefully watching the wolf while he did so, offered the wolf’s dagger to Wet. Wet took the dagger with his left paw, keeping the ax where it was, then tried again.
“Will you speak to me now, Growler?”
“You hold my weapon- how could I refuse to answer you?” The wolf snorted and swished his tail. “I am not a stormborn Faghin’n and have no desire to act as one before allies.”
Allies was a strange word to be heard from the mouth of this beast, but it had made no aggressive motions, and seemed to be cooperating if they played its little knife game. Making his decision, Wet signaled his Warfox to drop their weapons, but Foreshadowings noticeably kept an arrow in the string. Thinksidewaysfirst also had his own throwing knives in paw. As for Wet, well he held on to the haft of his ax with a firm grip.
“Allies, huh?” Wet said to the wolf. “We’ll see what the other Clanners think of that word.”
